Why We Took the Car by Wolfgang Herrndorf; trans. from the German by Tim Mohr Middle School, High School Levine/Scholastic 250 pp. 1/14 978-0-545-48180-9 $17.99 g e-book ed. 978-0-545-58636-8 $17.99 Two teens abandon their lackluster lives and hit the Autobahn in this audacious tragicomedy. Mike Klingenberg, boring and unpopular, lives a life of quiet desperation […]

Gobble You Up! by Gita Wolf; illus. by Sunita Preschool, Primary Tara 40 pp. 10/13 978-81-923171-4-4 $34.95 The outline is familiar: after gulping down animal after animal, a greedy creature bursts. Here it’s a jackal who devours the dozen fish his best friend the crane has caught for him, then the crane herself, and so […]

How I Discovered Poetry by Marilyn Nelson; illus. by Hadley Hooper Middle School Dial 103 pp. 1/14 978-0-8037-3304-6 $16.99 g In fifty poems (some previously published) Nelson chronicles her formative years during the 1950s, from age four to thirteen, against the backdrop of the cold war and stirrings of the civil rights movement and women’s […]

Hello, Mr. Hulot by David Merveille; illus. by the author Primary NorthSouth 56 pp. 9/13 978-0-7358-4135-2 $17.95 Monsieur Hulot, a character invented and played by French filmmaker Jacques Tati in such movies as Les Vacances de M. Hulot (Mr. Hulot’s Holiday), is one part schlemiel, one part everyman, one part existentialist, and all parts kindness. […]

The Mad Potter: George E. Ohr, Eccentric Genius by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan Intermediate, Middle School Porter/Roaring Brook 56 pp. 10/13 978-1-59643-810-1 $17.99 “Eccentric” is an apt word for Ohr, a Mississippi blacksmith’s son (1857–1918) who reinvented himself as a potter: though he began his distinctive works on a potter’s wheel, he then reshaped […]

The Midnight Dress by Karen Foxlee High School Knopf 281 pp. 10/13 978-0-375-85645-7 $16.99 Library ed. 978-0-375-95645-4 $19.99 e-book ed. 978-0-449-81821-3 $9.99 Self-contained, morose fifteen-year-old Rose and her alcoholic father arrive in Australian beach town Leonora, and it seems like they may actually stay put for a spell, for once. Rose enrolls in school and […]

Big Bad Wolf [Urgency Emergency!] by Dosh Archer; illus. by the author Primary Whitman 48 pp. 9/13 978-0-8075-8352-4 $12.99 Itsy Bitsy Spider [Urgency Emergency!] by Dosh Archer; illus. by the author Primary Whitman 48 pp. 9/13 978-0-8075-8358-6 $12.99 New readers are in for a treat with these British imports. Both are set in an emergency […]

March: Book One by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illus. by Nate Powell Middle School, High School Top Shelf Productions 128 pp. 8/13 978-1-60309-300-2 $14.95 Congressman John Lewis — the last surviving member of the “Big Six” civil rights leaders — recounts his formative years in this first volume of a planned trilogy. The book […]